"Yes, a vocal minority of Apple users are smug and elitist, but a majority realize that it is just a computer / OS so it really doesn't matter."
I don't agree with this. Apple's main marketing thrust is smug elitism and I think they are differentiated in that respect. Yes, all platforms have their share of all kinds of users, but Apple is different in that the nuture elitism.
"(some iPod issues, but got a free replacement/upgrade in a store walk-in, no appointment)"
I've never seen an Apple store not require an appointment. Sometimes you can make one while in the store. Every store I've been to has had a significant wait.
Your experience is good while mine is bad and that's how it goes. The difference is that when the company is Dell or any other PC maker, it seems that bashing that company is justified while Apple deserves an apology. I feel as you do, yet Apple doesn't deserve a pass when Dell/IBM/HP do not.
no, you just have to fight to get a spot in line or mail your system off to get help.
2 or 3 years is great compared to my mac experiences. i've own 3 mac's and all have had mb failures. the mini in 1 month, the powermac after 10 days and the MBP after 3 months.
you'd have a REALLY hard time proving that. Businesses that buy 10's of thousands of machines at a time scrutinize very closely, yet none of those buy macs. I'd say all the major PC makers are more heavily scrutinized than Apple, just not by the press.
"Unlike Microsoft, which has a lot of customers that are concerned about legacy application support, Apple has a customer-base that generally uses newer software, and tends to be more forgiving to these kinds of problems..."
I thought mac users were more demanding and less forgiving? Also, I thought a huge virtue of a mac was that it lasted longer? All the owners of old macs running pre-OSX would seem to contradict your claims.
The real issue is that compability drives the PC market first and foremost while it is not of great concern to Apple. PC's are business computers where compatibility is everything. Macs are boutique computers where image is everything.
Revision A hardware in the PC world is not a gamble because PC's evolve and there is continuity. Compatibility is rigorously tested. Changes are incremental.
Revision A hardware in the mac world is a crapshoot because Apple is fashion amd they undertest. Apple gets away with it because no one wants the indignity of using last season's machine. PC gamers are similar.
Dell get slagged for being conservative yet that very approach makes them safe and earns them the sale in large business accounts. Apple can put a good face on it, but Apple and Dell both know that Apple would rather have Dell's sales than their own. Being the pudgy, balding PC rather than the youthful, hip mac in their TV commercials has a lot of appeal when you're cashing the check.
"People are *more* vocal when something goes wrong with something they like"
No they aren't. They are considerably less vocal especially when large sums of money are involved. Ego prevents them from speaking out. OTOH, a product that is meaningless will often get blamed for all matter of problems that aren't justified. since people have no problem trashtalking products they aren't personally invested in. Apple is all about getting their customers personally invested.
not any more than anyone else. Macheads are notorious for using the 1st generation apology though.
Frankly, I thought the 1G iPod was better than all the generations that succeeded it until the current models. My 1G lasted longer and it's click wheel was far superior to what followed.
Funny, I'd say just the opposite. Mac users are constantly in denial over issues and pretend quality problems don't exist. It isn't an Intel mac thing, it's an iPod thing and a software thing as well. Mac users tend to BELIEVE they are picky but they are, in fact, oblivious. Yes, they hype their systems as being somehow "flawless" and they buy into their own hype.
How many models of Dell/Sony laptops have had some sort of problem where I could scrape off some paint? None that I've owned (and I've owned many), which makes this just another Apple apology.
"So what's the difference? When Apple user's computers have the smallest problems, they get together on their little forums and compare notes about every little flake of paint. When Dell users computers have small problems, they either ignore them, or they call some guy in India and try to get it replaced."
Hardly. Apple users grumble quietly about their issues hoping they'll be resolved without anyone noticing outside their club. Meanwhile they pretend Apple's shit don't stink when the evangelize they're beloved platform.
"I don't see any Apple people, however, complaining about the quality of their hardware/software and wishing they'd bought a Dell running Windows."
No, because those that have are no longer "Apple people".
It's statements like these that tell you what really goes on in the minds of Apple apologists. Apple tells you that owning a mac meams you are smarter, cooler, hipper, better than everyone else. People buy into that and actually believe they are members of an elite group, a team, the "Apple people", and that they have an obligation to keep the faith or get banished. They strut around with their noses in the air while privately grunbling about problems that often times are a joke in the PC world. Their platform is the greatest because they have been told so and they tell one another so, despite shortcomings obvious to everyone else.
- They say that Apple quality is unmatched yet they have excessive failure rates. iPods are unmatched in that regard.
- They say support is the industry's best yet getting a time slot in the Genius Bar can be virtually impossible.
- They say they are the experts in usability yet they cling to decades-old design errors with tired apologies.
- They think whatever mac offerings exist at a given time is all that anyone would ever want. Case in point currently is the mini. A computer that no one wanted til it existed became the solution to the world's home computing problems.
Apple is high computing fashion, computing couture, and the saying in fashion is "beauty is pain". "Apple people" never admit that their mac shoes hurt.
media center pc's are a lot more than "on demand". I get on demand through my cable box right now. I have no interest for PPV on-demand through a computer. YMMV.
File formats don't matter when you use PVR functions, rip DVD's or buy through a store specifically supported by your platform but they matter a lot when you want to play formats downloaded from arbitrary sources. iTunes is supported on Windows but WMV formats are not all supported on the mac, so if you want a universal player OS X can't offer it. MCE is your only your only choice, sad to say.
I don't know anyone who views media center pc's as simply on-demand devices and network clients but you. Perhaps Apple is "poised" to deliver that interpretation but who cares?
I own two media center pc's. Originally I wanted to use mini's until I realized they can't do what I want. Originally I figured 500GB would be enough but I've already doubled the storage on them.
Apple needs to make a somewhat bigger mini with styling more in line with home theater electronics and at least one 3.5" disk in it. Supporting only 1 drive and possibly 2 DIMM's would make the machine modestly larger but faster with 5x the storage and similar pricing. Such a machine would be far superior to the mini for use in a media center and equally appealing to existing mini buyers IMHO.
It would also help if TIVO would support OS X. I'd be happy with an enlarged mini and TIVOtogo.
Yes, the mini now has the CPU power to play back video. So do a lot of other boxes. The difference is that other boxes can play back more file formats and they have essential internal disk capacity and I/O that the mini lacks. A device that's incapable of doing what users want isn't a good choice, and for media pc's that's PVR functionality. I want something with far better than 100GB. Try 1000GB.
In the MCE world, the mini would be similar to a media center extender since it plays all its content from network resources. Big deal.
"...BSD is for code written at my current place of work, since I work at a publicly funded university. Taxpayers (including corporations) already payed for my work, so they should be able to use it any way they want..."
ah, and I completely agree with that. Some would say that such code should be GPL'ed but I don't agree. A BSD-like license is the right answer.
"Okay, let's say the free software spirit instead. Ask the FSF. They would probably disagree with your claim of no GPL spirit."
Haha, I'm sure you're right and I doubt I'd convince RMS otherwise. My comment regarded how a license would be interpreted. What the author(s) intended msy be different.
Otherwise, I completely agree with you. I don't believe, assuming GPLv3 achieves its goals, that it will be universally adopted. I feel you are free to license your work as you like but i'm not sure v3 will be better for the community than v2.
Re:i dissed them for lousy linux support on news.c
on
The Future of Flash
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· Score: 1
...and we all know you run IE on your alternative platform (not supported by flash).
Perhaps someone should tell YouTube to use AJAX. After all it's just as good as Flash and everyone implements graceful fallbacks in AJAX when JS is disabled.
admittedly I haven't tried in a year or so but that implementation has been around a while. Problem is that I use a monitor that Linux doesn't get right yet windows always does. Furthermore, my experience with KVM's is that they don't pass DDC correctly (at least none of mine do). As a result, I've never had a Linux install get dpi correct.:( Perhaps I need better KVM's.
I don't always want a 120 dpi display set to 120 dpi either. Depends on how close I sit to it. X, by virtue of the screen dimensions, makes setting that less convenient. Windows lets you enter the number directly.
The answer is "who knows" but government help isn't the same as government ownership.
I think government involvement is essential to the buildout of infrastructure. Otherwise a large portion of the population won't be served. I don't believe government ownership of the infrastructure is in our best interests, and that's something that's consistently believed in the US but not always in other countries. The US accomplished these things through granted monopolies, regulation, subsidies and mandates.
"You mean software licensed to third parties by other third parties with none of my code involved? Where did I write that?"
You take offense when a company uses GPL'ed code, complies with the license, but doesn't unlock it's hardware. That's what I mean by "how others use software licensed to them"
"If I don't accept how they want to do business with me, I have no obligation to do business with them..."
Yes, but that's the extent of it. I'll remind you that you also said "Deny all you want, but don't expect my computer to obey you." What did you mean by "obey"?
"Now where did I say that?"
Once again, you said it here: "Deny all you want, but don't expect my computer to obey you."
"And they are free to do so, except using my code. In addition, they cannot expect me to buy their DRM:ed offerings (although I won't pirate it either)."
Perhaps, depending on your license. Depending on the circumstances, GPLv2 and DRM aren't mutually exclusive. As far as pirating, that's good to hear. Seems like you were implying otherwise.
"Such as the advantage of reduced costs. This certainly gives them two options, lower prices or raised profit margin (or a combination of the two). But I don't see why programmers releasing GPL software have any responsibility to fund the development for vendors that don't want to pass on the GPL spirit to their customers."
Certainly one of the big incentives is cost, especially when a product may otherwise not even be viable.
Programmers don't release GPL out of any responsibility to anyone. They do it for fun, for glory, for education, for principle. Some do it for pay, but no programmer sets out to volunteer his work so that others may profit, and in no way can the efforts of these programmers be considered "funding".
Now, regarding "the GPL spirit", there is no such thing. There is the license itself and nothing else. What matters is how that license is interpreted by those involved (which may include judges and juries if it gets to that point). The "spirit" of the GPL is subject to the whims of RMS and will change as his personal politics change. If you release code under a license then don't get mad when you find out your license doesn't pack the punch you thought it did.
So far, the GPL hasn't even been tested so we have only the opinions of the FSF and attorneys who have commented to tell us what it actually means. I personally have trouble believing that the inclusion of header files constitutes linking, for example, since a header is simply documentation on how to use an interface. I would be excited to hear how a challenge to that played out.
"Such as retaining the ability to profiteer from other peoples' work, but not comply fully with their wishes?"
Their wishes are reflected in their license. If their license allows certain use then who's to say a company doesn't comply?
It's clear that RMS realizes that GPLv2 doesn't extend as far as he wants it to. There wouldn't be a GPLv3 if that wasn't the case. For those that agree with RMS's politics, they should embrace and evangelize GPLv3. Not all agree (Linus included) and the more radical and restrictive RMS gets with his policies the more marginalized he will become. Linus wants Linux (and free software in general) to remain relevant. Some programmers take it much further than that and don't agree with even the GPLv2 restrictions.
Believe it or not, some programmers don't mind their work being integrated into commercial products, just as some content creators freely release works into the public domain. GPL'ed works compete with these projects as well.
but how big a glyph is on the screen is less important than how large it is perceived. you have to consider screen dpi and viewing distance. admittedly, font size doesn't consider viewing distance BUT font size alone isn't an answer to anything.
Too bad Windows doesn't completely support display dpi. I have purchased Dell laptops with 130dpi displays and Dell configures the display dpi properly (130) from the factory. trouble is that the initial boot dialogs didn't display properly. How embarrassing!
I think Windows should be set to 96dpi and actual screen dpi handled separately. Hopefully MS (and Apple too) will get this fixed.
My experience is that none of the OS'es handle scaling right, Linux included. The main difference is that screen resolution is easy to specify in Windows and painful in Linux. OS X is well known to fully support screen resolutions as long as they're 100 dpi. Frankly, they are all fucked.
I use a 200 dpi display for both Windows and Linux so I get an extreme look at what goes wrong. I set both to 100 dpi and deal with matters in other ways.
Interestingly, only one monitor provides this resolution. OS X supported it at one time but is now reported to be broken. Windows just works with it as long as you select the right video card. Linux thinks it supports it (to a degree) but getting it to work requires the patience of a saint. Once I got it working I didn't dare change the machine again. x86-64 worked but the exact same config in x86-32 would not. Got to love Linux.
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"Yes, a vocal minority of Apple users are smug and elitist, but a majority realize that it is just a computer / OS so it really doesn't matter."
I don't agree with this. Apple's main marketing thrust is smug elitism and I think they are differentiated in that respect. Yes, all platforms have their share of all kinds of users, but Apple is different in that the nuture elitism.
"(some iPod issues, but got a free replacement/upgrade in a store walk-in, no appointment)"
I've never seen an Apple store not require an appointment. Sometimes you can make one while in the store. Every store I've been to has had a significant wait.
Your experience is good while mine is bad and that's how it goes. The difference is that when the company is Dell or any other PC maker, it seems that bashing that company is justified while Apple deserves an apology. I feel as you do, yet Apple doesn't deserve a pass when Dell/IBM/HP do not.
Haha I sit at a big table.
I am sterotyping "apple people" no more than the previous poster. I quoted it after all in response to the parent's use of the term.
My opinions are no more or lese supported than the one's I responded to.
Developers use Apple products just as they use non-Apple ones. They write software for them.
no, you just have to fight to get a spot in line or mail your system off to get help.
2 or 3 years is great compared to my mac experiences. i've own 3 mac's and all have had mb failures. the mini in 1 month, the powermac after 10 days and the MBP after 3 months.
you'd have a REALLY hard time proving that. Businesses that buy 10's of thousands of machines at a time scrutinize very closely, yet none of those buy macs. I'd say all the major PC makers are more heavily scrutinized than Apple, just not by the press.
hmmm i've never used the Windows key in my life. What does it do? "big pain to use for lack of convenient keyboard shortcuts" I don't think so.
"Unlike Microsoft, which has a lot of customers that are concerned about legacy application support, Apple has a customer-base that generally uses newer software, and tends to be more forgiving to these kinds of problems..."
I thought mac users were more demanding and less forgiving? Also, I thought a huge virtue of a mac was that it lasted longer? All the owners of old macs running pre-OSX would seem to contradict your claims.
The real issue is that compability drives the PC market first and foremost while it is not of great concern to Apple. PC's are business computers where compatibility is everything. Macs are boutique computers where image is everything.
Revision A hardware in the PC world is not a gamble because PC's evolve and there is continuity. Compatibility is rigorously tested. Changes are incremental.
Revision A hardware in the mac world is a crapshoot because Apple is fashion amd they undertest. Apple gets away with it because no one wants the indignity of using last season's machine. PC gamers are similar.
Dell get slagged for being conservative yet that very approach makes them safe and earns them the sale in large business accounts. Apple can put a good face on it, but Apple and Dell both know that Apple would rather have Dell's sales than their own. Being the pudgy, balding PC rather than the youthful, hip mac in their TV commercials has a lot of appeal when you're cashing the check.
no, because of truth in advertising laws. ;-)
"People are *more* vocal when something goes wrong with something they like"
No they aren't. They are considerably less vocal especially when large sums of money are involved. Ego prevents them from speaking out. OTOH, a product that is meaningless will often get blamed for all matter of problems that aren't justified. since people have no problem trashtalking products they aren't personally invested in. Apple is all about getting their customers personally invested.
not any more than anyone else. Macheads are notorious for using the 1st generation apology though.
Frankly, I thought the 1G iPod was better than all the generations that succeeded it until the current models. My 1G lasted longer and it's click wheel was far superior to what followed.
and Apple says a lot more than that in those commercials as well.
Funny, I'd say just the opposite. Mac users are constantly in denial over issues and pretend quality problems don't exist. It isn't an Intel mac thing, it's an iPod thing and a software thing as well. Mac users tend to BELIEVE they are picky but they are, in fact, oblivious. Yes, they hype their systems as being somehow "flawless" and they buy into their own hype.
How many models of Dell/Sony laptops have had some sort of problem where I could scrape off some paint? None that I've owned (and I've owned many), which makes this just another Apple apology.
"So what's the difference? When Apple user's computers have the smallest problems, they get together on their little forums and compare notes about every little flake of paint. When Dell users computers have small problems, they either ignore them, or they call some guy in India and try to get it replaced."
Hardly. Apple users grumble quietly about their issues hoping they'll be resolved without anyone noticing outside their club. Meanwhile they pretend Apple's shit don't stink when the evangelize they're beloved platform.
"I don't see any Apple people, however, complaining about the quality of their hardware/software and wishing they'd bought a Dell running Windows."
No, because those that have are no longer "Apple people".
It's statements like these that tell you what really goes on in the minds of Apple apologists. Apple tells you that owning a mac meams you are smarter, cooler, hipper, better than everyone else. People buy into that and actually believe they are members of an elite group, a team, the "Apple people", and that they have an obligation to keep the faith or get banished. They strut around with their noses in the air while privately grunbling about problems that often times are a joke in the PC world. Their platform is the greatest because they have been told so and they tell one another so, despite shortcomings obvious to everyone else.
- They say that Apple quality is unmatched yet they have excessive failure rates. iPods are unmatched in that regard.
- They say support is the industry's best yet getting a time slot in the Genius Bar can be virtually impossible.
- They say they are the experts in usability yet they cling to decades-old design errors with tired apologies.
- They think whatever mac offerings exist at a given time is all that anyone would ever want. Case in point currently is the mini. A computer that no one wanted til it existed became the solution to the world's home computing problems.
Apple is high computing fashion, computing couture, and the saying in fashion is "beauty is pain". "Apple people" never admit that their mac shoes hurt.
media center pc's are a lot more than "on demand". I get on demand through my cable box right now. I have no interest for PPV on-demand through a computer. YMMV.
File formats don't matter when you use PVR functions, rip DVD's or buy through a store specifically supported by your platform but they matter a lot when you want to play formats downloaded from arbitrary sources. iTunes is supported on Windows but WMV formats are not all supported on the mac, so if you want a universal player OS X can't offer it. MCE is your only your only choice, sad to say.
I don't know anyone who views media center pc's as simply on-demand devices and network clients but you. Perhaps Apple is "poised" to deliver that interpretation but who cares?
I own two media center pc's. Originally I wanted to use mini's until I realized they can't do what I want. Originally I figured 500GB would be enough but I've already doubled the storage on them.
Apple needs to make a somewhat bigger mini with styling more in line with home theater electronics and at least one 3.5" disk in it. Supporting only 1 drive and possibly 2 DIMM's would make the machine modestly larger but faster with 5x the storage and similar pricing. Such a machine would be far superior to the mini for use in a media center and equally appealing to existing mini buyers IMHO.
It would also help if TIVO would support OS X. I'd be happy with an enlarged mini and TIVOtogo.
I'm sorry but what did you spell out?
Yes, the mini now has the CPU power to play back video. So do a lot of other boxes. The difference is that other boxes can play back more file formats and they have essential internal disk capacity and I/O that the mini lacks. A device that's incapable of doing what users want isn't a good choice, and for media pc's that's PVR functionality. I want something with far better than 100GB. Try 1000GB.
In the MCE world, the mini would be similar to a media center extender since it plays all its content from network resources. Big deal.
monitor standards is where those came from for better or worse.
as for SuSE 10, that's one distro and relatively new. Nice to see it finally coming around.
display dpi is what I was talking about, not the video mode.
as far as what you were talking about, that depends on how the X config file is set up. In my case, I had to do that by hand and it was not easy.
yes, if i'd wanted to...but i didn't. not every user desires to be a developer.
of course, in this case it was a 64-bit vs 32-bit issue and closed source drivers were involved.
there's always an apologist.
"...BSD is for code written at my current place of work, since I work at a publicly funded university. Taxpayers (including corporations) already payed for my work, so they should be able to use it any way they want..."
ah, and I completely agree with that. Some would say that such code should be GPL'ed but I don't agree. A BSD-like license is the right answer.
"Okay, let's say the free software spirit instead. Ask the FSF. They would probably disagree with your claim of no GPL spirit."
Haha, I'm sure you're right and I doubt I'd convince RMS otherwise. My comment regarded how a license would be interpreted. What the author(s) intended msy be different.
Otherwise, I completely agree with you. I don't believe, assuming GPLv3 achieves its goals, that it will be universally adopted. I feel you are free to license your work as you like but i'm not sure v3 will be better for the community than v2.
...and we all know you run IE on your alternative platform (not supported by flash).
Perhaps someone should tell YouTube to use AJAX. After all it's just as good as Flash and everyone implements graceful fallbacks in AJAX when JS is disabled.
Yep, that's how it's supposed to work. ;-) YMMV
:( Perhaps I need better KVM's.
admittedly I haven't tried in a year or so but that implementation has been around a while. Problem is that I use a monitor that Linux doesn't get right yet windows always does. Furthermore, my experience with KVM's is that they don't pass DDC correctly (at least none of mine do). As a result, I've never had a Linux install get dpi correct.
I don't always want a 120 dpi display set to 120 dpi either. Depends on how close I sit to it. X, by virtue of the screen dimensions, makes setting that less convenient. Windows lets you enter the number directly.
The answer is "who knows" but government help isn't the same as government ownership.
I think government involvement is essential to the buildout of infrastructure. Otherwise a large portion of the population won't be served. I don't believe government ownership of the infrastructure is in our best interests, and that's something that's consistently believed in the US but not always in other countries. The US accomplished these things through granted monopolies, regulation, subsidies and mandates.
"You mean software licensed to third parties by other third parties with none of my code involved? Where did I write that?"
You take offense when a company uses GPL'ed code, complies with the license, but doesn't unlock it's hardware. That's what I mean by "how others use software licensed to them"
"If I don't accept how they want to do business with me, I have no obligation to do business with them..."
Yes, but that's the extent of it. I'll remind you that you also said "Deny all you want, but don't expect my computer to obey you." What did you mean by "obey"?
"Now where did I say that?"
Once again, you said it here: "Deny all you want, but don't expect my computer to obey you."
"And they are free to do so, except using my code. In addition, they cannot expect me to buy their DRM:ed offerings (although I won't pirate it either)."
Perhaps, depending on your license. Depending on the circumstances, GPLv2 and DRM aren't mutually exclusive. As far as pirating, that's good to hear. Seems like you were implying otherwise.
"Such as the advantage of reduced costs. This certainly gives them two options, lower prices or raised profit margin (or a combination of the two). But I don't see why programmers releasing GPL software have any responsibility to fund the development for vendors that don't want to pass on the GPL spirit to their customers."
Certainly one of the big incentives is cost, especially when a product may otherwise not even be viable.
Programmers don't release GPL out of any responsibility to anyone. They do it for fun, for glory, for education, for principle. Some do it for pay, but no programmer sets out to volunteer his work so that others may profit, and in no way can the efforts of these programmers be considered "funding".
Now, regarding "the GPL spirit", there is no such thing. There is the license itself and nothing else. What matters is how that license is interpreted by those involved (which may include judges and juries if it gets to that point). The "spirit" of the GPL is subject to the whims of RMS and will change as his personal politics change. If you release code under a license then don't get mad when you find out your license doesn't pack the punch you thought it did.
So far, the GPL hasn't even been tested so we have only the opinions of the FSF and attorneys who have commented to tell us what it actually means. I personally have trouble believing that the inclusion of header files constitutes linking, for example, since a header is simply documentation on how to use an interface. I would be excited to hear how a challenge to that played out.
"Such as retaining the ability to profiteer from other peoples' work, but not comply fully with their wishes?"
Their wishes are reflected in their license. If their license allows certain use then who's to say a company doesn't comply?
It's clear that RMS realizes that GPLv2 doesn't extend as far as he wants it to. There wouldn't be a GPLv3 if that wasn't the case. For those that agree with RMS's politics, they should embrace and evangelize GPLv3. Not all agree (Linus included) and the more radical and restrictive RMS gets with his policies the more marginalized he will become. Linus wants Linux (and free software in general) to remain relevant. Some programmers take it much further than that and don't agree with even the GPLv2 restrictions.
Believe it or not, some programmers don't mind their work being integrated into commercial products, just as some content creators freely release works into the public domain. GPL'ed works compete with these projects as well.
Yes, plus it would make it easier for the government to filter content and eavesdrop on its citizens. Sounds wonderful.
State-sponsored monopolies have been used successfully in the past. I would prefer my communications not to be owned by the government.
but how big a glyph is on the screen is less important than how large it is perceived. you have to consider screen dpi and viewing distance. admittedly, font size doesn't consider viewing distance BUT font size alone isn't an answer to anything.
Too bad Windows doesn't completely support display dpi. I have purchased Dell laptops with 130dpi displays and Dell configures the display dpi properly (130) from the factory. trouble is that the initial boot dialogs didn't display properly. How embarrassing!
I think Windows should be set to 96dpi and actual screen dpi handled separately. Hopefully MS (and Apple too) will get this fixed.
My experience is that none of the OS'es handle scaling right, Linux included. The main difference is that screen resolution is easy to specify in Windows and painful in Linux. OS X is well known to fully support screen resolutions as long as they're 100 dpi. Frankly, they are all fucked.
I use a 200 dpi display for both Windows and Linux so I get an extreme look at what goes wrong. I set both to 100 dpi and deal with matters in other ways.
Interestingly, only one monitor provides this resolution. OS X supported it at one time but is now reported to be broken. Windows just works with it as long as you select the right video card. Linux thinks it supports it (to a degree) but getting it to work requires the patience of a saint. Once I got it working I didn't dare change the machine again. x86-64 worked but the exact same config in x86-32 would not. Got to love Linux.
Apple's 30" display is 100 dpi. As long as the monitor is viewed at the normal distance the cursor will be the same size as it always has been.